Speaker 1: The dopamine that you get.
Speaker 2: The reaction from the glass of whatever you're having is
Speaker 2: actually between twenty and thirty minutes, and then your body
Speaker 2: is desperate to get back to homeostasis, so it pumps
Speaker 2: you with this downer called dinorphan, and you cannot replicate
Speaker 2: that feel good feeling with the second class.
Speaker 3: Welcome to the one you feed throughout time. Great thinkers
Speaker 3: have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes
Speaker 3: like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think,
Speaker 3: ring true. And yet for many of us, our thoughts
Speaker 3: don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy,
Speaker 3: or fear. We see what we don't have instead of
Speaker 3: what we do. We think things that hold us back
Speaker 3: and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking.
Speaker 3: Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent and creative effort
Speaker 3: to make a life worth living. This podcast is about
Speaker 3: how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction,
Speaker 3: how they feed their good wolf.
Speaker 4: Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is
Speaker 4: Christy Osborne. After passing the California bar Exam, Christy relocated
Speaker 4: to London and assumed various roles in law, public relations,
Speaker 4: and business development, including working for the UK Parliament and
Speaker 4: founding a popular website for American expat women. But Christy
Speaker 4: discovered her true calling when she chose sobriety and discovered
Speaker 4: a passion for helping women on their own journeys. As
Speaker 4: a highly trained senior sobriety coach, she empowers women throughout
Speaker 4: the US and UK to redefine their relationship with alcohol. Today,
Speaker 4: Christy and Eric discuss her book Love Life Sober, a
Speaker 4: forty Day Alcohol Fast to Rediscover your joy, improve your health,
Speaker 4: and renew your mind. And for any listeners that don't
Speaker 4: already know, I'm very happy to say that we are
Speaker 4: now on YouTube officially, so you can watch your favorite
Speaker 4: interviews as well. Find us at the one You Feed
Speaker 4: pod on YouTube.
Speaker 5: Hi Christy, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 1: Hey Eric, thank you so much for having me. I'm
Speaker 1: really excited to be here today.
Speaker 5: I'm excited to talk with you about your new book,
Speaker 5: which is called Love Life Sober, a forty day Alcohol
Speaker 5: Fast to Rediscover your joy, improve your health, and renew
Speaker 5: your mind. But before we get into that, we will
Speaker 5: start in the way that we customarily do, which is
Speaker 5: with the parable. And in that parable, there's a grandparent
Speaker 5: who's talking with your grandchild and they say, in life,
Speaker 5: there are two wolves inside of us that are always
Speaker 5: at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things
Speaker 5: like kindness and bravery and love, and the other is
Speaker 5: a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred
Speaker 5: and fear. The grandchild stops think about it, for so
Speaker 5: can they look up at their grandparent and they say, well,
Speaker 5: which one wins? And the grandparent says, the one you feed.
Speaker 5: So I'd like to start off by asking you what
Speaker 5: that parable means to you in your life and in
Speaker 5: the work that you do.
Speaker 2: Yeah, thank you so much for the question. I was
Speaker 2: actually thinking about this obviously knowing I was coming on today,
Speaker 2: and I was coaching a lady this morning who I
Speaker 2: coach women who want to break free or take a
Speaker 2: break from alcohol, and we were talking a lot about
Speaker 2: this idea of.
Speaker 1: Creating more space.
Speaker 2: And I think when we're talking about alcohol, or any addiction,
Speaker 2: or any negative behavior or habit we want to change,
Speaker 2: we focus so much on not feeding right the bad wolf,
Speaker 2: and we don't focus so much on feeding the good wolf,
Speaker 2: but also what to feed it right? And so, for example,
Speaker 2: with this lady this morning, when we were talking about space,
Speaker 2: it was the space to joyfully move her body and
Speaker 2: to eat healthy, and to have time for herself and
Speaker 2: to begin in enjoying music and all of these things.
Speaker 2: And so when we're talking about this and the scheme
Speaker 2: of I think alcohol, right, it's what can you feed
Speaker 2: the good wolf with to make yourself feel better and
Speaker 2: the person that you end up wanting to be. And so, yeah,
Speaker 2: that's what I thought of today when I was preparing
Speaker 2: for today.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 5: I really love that response because one of the things
Speaker 5: that I got out of your book that I thought
Speaker 5: was useful was when you hear forty day alcohol fast,
Speaker 5: it's easy to think of like a sober January or
Speaker 5: a I don't know how many months now have a
Speaker 5: dry version of them, associating with them, right.
Speaker 6: All of them.
Speaker 5: And while that's a lovely idea, mostly what people do
Speaker 5: is just not drink for that month. And your book
Speaker 5: is really saying, let's use this time that A. Yes,
Speaker 5: you're ideally not going to be drinking, but let's explore
Speaker 5: your relationship with alcohol during that time. Why are you
Speaker 5: doing it, what are you getting from it? What might
Speaker 5: the benefits of not doing it, and your book does
Speaker 5: a great job of walking through a lot of those things,
Speaker 5: and that's why I think it's a really useful addition
Speaker 5: to this sort of dry January movement, which again is valuable.
Speaker 5: But if you just don't drink for thirty days, nothing's different.
Speaker 5: I mean, you're probably healthier in many ways at the
Speaker 5: end of it, but the way you think about the
Speaker 5: world may not be that different. Whereas your program gives
Speaker 5: you an opportunity to do that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I talk about in the book that I did
Speaker 2: all of those things right. I did the dry Januaries,
Speaker 2: the sober Octobers, and it's exactly what you said. I
Speaker 2: ended up drinking. Nothing really changed as far as the
Speaker 2: behavior of drinking. And there was one particular dry January
Speaker 2: where February ruled around it. I drank even more because
Speaker 2: I kind of had proven to myself that I didn't
Speaker 2: have a quote unquote problem and so that I could
Speaker 2: continue on. And there was no real look at the
Speaker 2: reasons behind why I was drinking. It was just this
Speaker 2: white knuckle figure out how to not drink for thirty
Speaker 2: days and get through it as fast as possible. And
Speaker 2: that didn't work for me, and so I obviously wanted
Speaker 2: to try something different. What I really really wanted to
Speaker 2: do when it got to the point where I wanted
Speaker 2: to seriously look at my drinking is I wanted to
Speaker 2: lose the desire to drink. I didn't want to have
Speaker 2: that desire. I wanted to have freedom from alcohol.
Speaker 5: I've thought before about what did I get out of
Speaker 5: twelve step programs that helped me get sober, because I
Speaker 5: have drifted away from them over the years for a
Speaker 5: variety of different reasons. And one of the things that
Speaker 5: I got out of them that I thought was like,
Speaker 5: this is a critical component, is a method for changing
Speaker 5: the way that we view the world and think about alcohol,
Speaker 5: and that's what the twelve Steps ideally will do. And
Speaker 5: so again this is a different version of that, but
Speaker 5: there's a very clear path here to walking through that,
Speaker 5: and so I'd like to get into some of that.
Speaker 5: But first, maybe just tell us a little bit about
Speaker 5: what brought you to the point. Yeah, what life was
Speaker 5: like when you wanted to change your relationship with alcohol.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I grew up not drinking a lot, Like I
Speaker 2: went to USC for college in southern California, a big
Speaker 2: Greek school, I was in a sorority, but even then
Speaker 2: it was very measured. I wanted to be very much
Speaker 2: in control, and as I kind of look back, there
Speaker 2: was definitely upticks for various reasons. I went to law school,
Speaker 2: it kind of became this way of reward at the
Speaker 2: end of a hard day of studying. And then I
Speaker 2: moved to the UK right after I graduated law school,
Speaker 2: and it was the thing that everybody was doing over
Speaker 2: here to connect to meet new people. Then I became
Speaker 2: a mom, and then it was the thing that all
Speaker 2: the moms were doing as again the reward aspect of
Speaker 2: it a long hard day with babies, and I was
Speaker 2: alone in a foreign country with no family, and every
Speaker 2: mom that I looked at was using wine as the
Speaker 2: reward for being a mom.
Speaker 1: And so it was an.
Speaker 2: Incremental, slow uptick in the drinking. And I never did
Speaker 2: have this massive rock bottom moment. I've heard you tell
Speaker 2: your sobriety story, and I don't think I necessarily blew
Speaker 2: up my life. I could have gotten there, don't get
Speaker 2: me wrong, like it could have gotten there. But it
Speaker 2: was this slow, incremental uptick in the drinking and using
Speaker 2: it for various reasons and giving the wine, various jobs,
Speaker 2: and then my own mother passed away in twenty eighteen.
Speaker 2: And growing up she didn't drink, but in the last
Speaker 2: kind of ten years of her life she.
Speaker 1: Discovered alcohol and it changed her.
Speaker 2: It kind of wrecked our relationship, and so her death
Speaker 2: was very traumatic for me because I was mourning the
Speaker 2: loss of this mother who was my best friend growing
Speaker 2: up then who we had this great chasm of distance
Speaker 2: between us when she passed, And so what did I
Speaker 2: do to manage all those really hard emotions. I drank
Speaker 2: And people always ask me, were you, you know, at
Speaker 2: home on the couch drinker or were you the going
Speaker 2: out drinker? And I was both, But at the same
Speaker 2: time it looked very similar to my friends. I didn't
Speaker 2: know anybody that didn't drink. I knew that everybody you know,
Speaker 2: or at least I thought I did. Thank you social media,
Speaker 2: thank you Instagram, that everyone was having the wine at
Speaker 2: the end of the day because the homework was hard
Speaker 2: with the kids, or to let loose on a Friday night,
Speaker 2: and so it didn't feel like it looked any different,
Speaker 2: And so that was one of the things I think
Speaker 2: that kept me stuck right a little bit longer. But
Speaker 2: also this idea of maybe my drinking is not bad enough.
Speaker 2: I could never ever have pictured myself walking into an
Speaker 2: AA meeting and saying.
Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Christy, I'm an alcoholic.
Speaker 2: I just couldn't picture it because I thought, Okay, that
Speaker 2: feels like it could be a lot different than the
Speaker 2: way that I'm drinking. And so I felt really alone.
Speaker 2: I felt really really alone and lost, and I honestly
Speaker 2: didn't feel like I had anyone to talk to. And
Speaker 2: this is in twenty twenty, when the sober curious movement,
Speaker 2: I think, is just then gaining traction, and so thankfully
Speaker 2: there was that all lot to read and learn about
Speaker 2: over the course of the pandemic when I started my work,
Speaker 2: but it was very isolating and feeling very alone and
Speaker 2: feeling like is this something I even need to address
Speaker 2: if nobody else is, And so yeah, that's kind of
Speaker 2: how it all started.
Speaker 5: It's interesting you bring up my addiction story because there's
Speaker 5: two parts to it, and normally part one is what
Speaker 5: I reference. Part two is I stayed sober about eight
Speaker 5: years and I began to drink again, and I never
Speaker 5: went back to doing hard drugs, but I was drinking
Speaker 5: and I was smoking marijuana, and my bottom was not
Speaker 5: the bottom. Like I was doing well on all external measures.
Speaker 5: I've been just promoted. I had the best job I
Speaker 5: ever had. I had a nice home, I had a
Speaker 5: nice car. I mean, all these things were okay, and
Speaker 5: yet I sort of knew I was dying inside. And
Speaker 5: yet it was hard. It was harder for me because
Speaker 5: there was a voice that was like, oh, it's not
Speaker 5: that bad time. There was no sort of like if
Speaker 5: that voice had tried even that, I'd have been like
Speaker 5: everybody knew, like, Okay, that's ridiculous. This time around though, however,
Speaker 5: from the outside it didn't look that bad. And yet inside, yeah,
Speaker 5: was really where I was so sick. You know, I
Speaker 5: was lucky to be able to recognize I was as
Speaker 5: sick that time as I was the first time. It's
Speaker 5: just that circumstances had been different. But when it comes
Speaker 5: to your own recovery, Let's talk a little bit about
Speaker 5: that idea of alcoholic because I think this is one
Speaker 5: of the things that sober Curious movement has been of
Speaker 5: the most service to the world, I think, which is
Speaker 5: to get people away from having to think of identifying
Speaker 5: as alcoholic. Yeah, as the way to get better. So
Speaker 5: what was it that you identified in yourself that made
Speaker 5: you say, Okay, I may not be alcoholic, but I
Speaker 5: need to do something about this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I want to always start this conversation by
Speaker 2: saying that, like, I know absolutely nothing against AA and
Speaker 2: the people that find that label empowering, like that is awesome.
Speaker 2: It's just that it doesn't work and it doesn't feel
Speaker 2: good for everybody. Right. And so to your point too,
Speaker 2: of everything kind of looking good and you heard just promoted,
Speaker 2: you know, the morning that I stopped drinking, I was
Speaker 2: looking through my Instagram feed and I had a really
Speaker 2: popular blog for expat American women living in the UK.
Speaker 2: I had just been on Sky News to commentate for
Speaker 2: the royal wedding of Harry and Megan, and everything was
Speaker 2: like really.
Speaker 1: Glossy and pretty and all of this to the point that.
Speaker 2: You said, it just didn't feel real or authentic, Like
Speaker 2: I didn't feel like I was representing how I really
Speaker 2: truly felt inside. And so it was really that of
Speaker 2: just looking in the mirror one morning after a night
Speaker 2: out and just saying, I don't want to do this anymore.
Speaker 1: I don't want to feel this way.
Speaker 2: There's got to be something some paths to get me
Speaker 2: to feeling better, and I automatically knew that the first
Speaker 2: thing that had to at least go. And I never
Speaker 2: said forever. In the beginning, I didn't know what it meant.
Speaker 2: I had no idea. I didn't know if it was
Speaker 2: going to be thirty days, sixteen, I didn't I had
Speaker 2: no idea. I just knew that I needed a break.
Speaker 2: And so it was just kind of this again, like
Speaker 2: a slow burn of this feels awful.
Speaker 1: I knew I wasn't being the best mom I could be.
Speaker 2: I definitely valued like at the end of the day,
Speaker 2: the glass of wine over a bad time story or
Speaker 2: hanging out with my kids, because that felt like the
Speaker 2: thing that was mine and like, let's get those kids
Speaker 2: into bed as fast as possible so I can sit
Speaker 2: on the couch and have the wine. And it was
Speaker 2: just one of these slow things and I just woke
Speaker 2: up and I'm like, this is not who I am.
Speaker 1: This is so inauthentic.
Speaker 2: That's not the really that I'm portraying, And I've got
Speaker 2: to do something.
Speaker 5: Yeah, you talk a lot in the book about sort
Speaker 5: of this mommy wine culture, the room that's out there,
Speaker 5: share a little bit about what that is. I think
Speaker 5: a lot of people will know. I mean, you go
Speaker 5: anywhere and you just see these clever little signs that
Speaker 5: actually don't seem that clever about moms and drinking, but
Speaker 5: talk a little bit about that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and my mommy wine culture is the pervasive messaging
Speaker 2: right that we as mothers need wine in order to
Speaker 2: parent because they're really hard work. And when I really
Speaker 2: drilled down on the fact that that was the message
Speaker 2: that not only I was sending my kids, but to
Speaker 2: the other people that were following me, for example, on
Speaker 2: social media, that was not the woman that I wanted
Speaker 2: to be, right, And all you have to do is
Speaker 2: literally stroll through Target and see you see mommy wine
Speaker 2: culture everywhere on the tumblers and the baby onesies, and
Speaker 2: it's all about you know, the baby wines, whie.
Speaker 1: And so I wine wny.
Speaker 2: If you look at sc I think there's at the
Speaker 2: time of writing the book, there were seventy thousand products
Speaker 2: on etc. Promoting kind of this wine culture and mommy
Speaker 2: wine culture. Yeah. And I was also the one, by
Speaker 2: the way, that gifted these tumblers and like thought these
Speaker 2: were really cute and had the cocktail napkins and I
Speaker 2: had all of it, but it was just really drilling
Speaker 2: down to like is this true? Also, is alcohol helping
Speaker 2: me be a better mom?
Speaker 1: Is that true for me? And it wasn't.
Speaker 2: And so it was challenging this idea. And during the pandemic,
Speaker 2: actually Tropicana, the Orange juice company, came out with this
Speaker 2: ad and it was a bunch of actresses I'll leave
Speaker 2: their names out of it, but hiding in bathrooms or
Speaker 2: the garage in order to make a mimosa. And they
Speaker 2: showed them like hiding from their families and their kids,
Speaker 2: and it was like, yeah, the tagline of the campaign
Speaker 2: was take a me moment like as a mimosa. But
Speaker 2: for me, I remember thinking and I was very early
Speaker 2: into my sobriety at that point, and I was just thinking,
Speaker 2: this is not the message that we need to be
Speaker 2: sending to mothers during a global pandemic that you should
Speaker 2: hide from your kids and drink in your closet to survive.
Speaker 5: Hiding your drinking is generally a bad sign, just right
Speaker 5: right across the board like that, that's a pretty good
Speaker 5: indicator that call yourself what you want, but you may need,
Speaker 5: you may need to examine but I do think that
Speaker 5: is really true that. I think the message that's being
Speaker 5: sent there is too. First is that kids are so
Speaker 5: hard that you need a real way to cope with that,
Speaker 5: And there's some truth in the fact that parenting is difficult. Right.
Speaker 5: The second message is that the way to cope with
Speaker 5: any difficulty is through alcohol, and we tolerate it in
Speaker 5: that sense, But there's lots of other places where if
Speaker 5: we said it that explicitly, you might people might be like, well,
Speaker 5: hang on a second, Like if I was like, I
Speaker 5: have such bad depression and the thing that I do
Speaker 5: is I turned to a white claw hard Seltzer, right, Like,
Speaker 5: most people would look at that and be like, dude,
Speaker 5: that's a bad idea, But to say it taking care
Speaker 5: of my kids is a little bit different.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And the other side of that, too is what if
Speaker 2: you switched up the drug right, Like what if you said,
Speaker 2: I just need that line of cocaine or that right
Speaker 2: or that little bit of a heroine in order to
Speaker 2: get get me through these kids because they're really hard work.
Speaker 2: And then that of course opens up the whole thing
Speaker 2: of well, why are they different, and why is alcohol
Speaker 2: so socially acceptable, and why is it pushed on mothers
Speaker 2: as the thing that we need in order to parent?
Speaker 5: Yeah, I find the whole I'm going to celebrate. I
Speaker 5: want to be careful, not to be judgmental. Here to
Speaker 5: each their own right, but I have found this whole.
Speaker 5: I'm celebrating my near dependence on alcohol to be a
Speaker 5: strange thing. Maybe it's that when I started, I was
Speaker 5: underage and the last thing I wanted the world to
Speaker 5: know was that I drank all the time.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Now, this was a long time ago. Maybe the culture
Speaker 5: was very different. I don't know, But to me, it
Speaker 5: was never something that I was going to like outwardly proclaim.
Speaker 4: To the world.
Speaker 5: Yeah. Yeah, oh my god, this is my thing. But
Speaker 5: that is very much the culture. You see it certainly
Speaker 5: in the wine mom culture. I see it a lot
Speaker 5: in the retired woman culture. Also, I see a lot
Speaker 5: of it there. It's probably lots of other places. You
Speaker 5: talk a little bit about how pervasive alcohol is in
Speaker 5: our culture, and it really is.
Speaker 1: Everyone, Yeah it is.
Speaker 2: And to your point of that this becoming this almost
Speaker 2: point of being loud and proud about I recently saw
Speaker 2: there was an Instagram post and it was a gal
Speaker 2: using a tumblr to go to her son's soccer game,
Speaker 2: filling it with vodka, but then putting a tea bag
Speaker 2: like label hanging outside the YETI or whatever. So that
Speaker 2: and the line was where, yeah, where my soccer mom's at.
Speaker 2: And it literally has, of course, millions of likes and
Speaker 2: all these people being.
Speaker 1: Like, yeah, that's what I do. And I was just like,
Speaker 1: when did that happen?
Speaker 2: Because I don't remember going to my brother's soccer games
Speaker 2: and moms having yetti tumblers of white claw or whatever
Speaker 2: it is on the sidelines.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it is very interesting. And the flip side of
Speaker 5: it is shame perpetrates this, right, So it's a strange
Speaker 5: thing that's sort of happening, which is, on one hand,
Speaker 5: we're celebrating being this way, and yet on the other hand,
Speaker 5: the people who are really struggling with it. They may
Speaker 5: be so p officially buying that message, but inside they
Speaker 5: feel shame about how much they're drinking it. So it's
Speaker 5: this weird contradiction.
Speaker 1: It is this weird contradiction.
Speaker 2: And it also means that you know, women have to
Speaker 2: kind of want anyone really, but I say women because
Speaker 2: I coach women have to almost live up to this
Speaker 2: thing of keeping alcohol cute and making it look fun.
Speaker 2: But if you get hooked on it, oh my gosh, no,
Speaker 2: then you are other and there is something wrong with you.
Speaker 2: And then you have you know, all the things that
Speaker 2: come with that, the stigma and all of that. And
Speaker 2: so that's where obviously the shame kicks in. And the
Speaker 2: shame part is so important to talk about because when
Speaker 2: we're stuck in shame, we are in our survival part
Speaker 2: of our brain and we are not in our prefontal cortex.
Speaker 2: We can't make good decisions, and so we want to
Speaker 2: get out of that place.
Speaker 1: As fast as possible.
Speaker 2: And from personal experience, I know that the easy way
Speaker 2: out is wine when you're stuck in it, because it
Speaker 2: shifts the emotion real fast.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it is such a pernicious situation once you're in
Speaker 5: its grip, right, because you have alcohol, which is actively
Speaker 5: damaging your prefrontal cortex and your executive function, your ability
Speaker 5: to make good decisions. So you've got that happening, and then,
Speaker 5: like you said, you've got the shame happening, which is
Speaker 5: further shifting away from your prefrontal cortex and the ability
Speaker 5: to make decisions. And you have a great emotional strain,
Speaker 5: and the way you cope with that emotional strain is
Speaker 5: you drink. And it's easy to see how this just
Speaker 5: once you're in it, it tends to be no direction
Speaker 5: but down. Yeah, And again that's not for everybody, right,
Speaker 5: plenty of people moderate just fine. And so this is not,
Speaker 5: at least from my perspective, not an alcohol is a
Speaker 5: bad thing. It's just that I think there's a lot
Speaker 5: more people struggling with it than we might know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, one hundred percent, And we're in a day and
Speaker 2: age now right where we also do know so much
Speaker 2: more about it, and there is so much research on
Speaker 2: gen Z and the upcoming generation is not drinking as
Speaker 2: much as we did because they know the health ramifications
Speaker 2: of it and they've probably seen parents struggle with it.
Speaker 2: There's the whole idea that they also have smartphones, right,
Speaker 2: so the reason that we're using alcohol maybe to connect
Speaker 2: or to have fun, they just have to open up TikTok.
Speaker 2: And so we're seeing I think this shift from the
Speaker 2: younger generations using it as much. But I think a
Speaker 2: lot of that has to do with everything that we're
Speaker 2: learning about how it does. It is hard, It is hard,
Speaker 2: and moderation plenty of people can do it, but it
Speaker 2: can be tricky. Once you've given alcohol jobs, once you've
Speaker 2: leaned in, it's hard.
Speaker 5: I want to come back to that giving alcohol jobs
Speaker 5: thing in one second, but I want to ask a question,
Speaker 5: because you're closer to the recent search on all this
Speaker 5: than I am. Are we seen in gen Z a
Speaker 5: drop in using substances overall, or are we seeing a
Speaker 5: drop in alcohol with marijuana maybe making up more of
Speaker 5: that gap. I'm just curious.
Speaker 2: Yeah, definitely less alcohol, and there is research to suggest
Speaker 2: because marijuana is legal in a lot of states now
Speaker 2: and more prevalent, that that's had an uptick. I don't
Speaker 2: know the exact data on that, but I know that
Speaker 2: a lot of kids are drinking a lot less. You're
Speaker 2: drinking a lot less in college, which is a good thing.
Speaker 5: Okay, let's come back to this line. You just used
Speaker 5: giving alcohol jobs. What does that mean when we are
Speaker 5: giving alcohol jobs.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So, when I looked back at the reasons why I
Speaker 2: was drinking, it was for connection. It was for coping,
Speaker 2: for example, for the loss of my mom. I also
Speaker 2: really believed that wine was helping me sleep because listen,
Speaker 2: if I had two glasses of cabernet. I fell asleep,
Speaker 2: I passed out, I didn't actually fall asleep.
Speaker 1: So I was giving alcohol all these jobs.
Speaker 2: And when I looked at my why, and when I
Speaker 2: started talking through this with clients, that was one of
Speaker 2: the questions that really resonated with them. I would say, well,
Speaker 2: why are you drinking? But when I said to them
Speaker 2: what is the job that you are giving to that
Speaker 2: glass of wine? It was all all of a sudden,
Speaker 2: just a lot more clear of the reason, kind of
Speaker 2: behind the why and all of that. And another way
Speaker 2: to ask that is what is the unmet need? What
Speaker 2: do you actually need when you're pouring that glass of wine?
Speaker 1: Is at rest? Is it connection? Is it fun? Is
Speaker 1: it coping?
Speaker 2: Is it because there's a really hard emotion that you
Speaker 2: don't want to feel because you weren't taught to feel it.
Speaker 2: And so I just think it's a really good way
Speaker 2: of getting behind the reasons. And then you get to
Speaker 2: ask the amazing follow up question, right of is that true?
Speaker 2: Is alcohol doing that job? And I know that this
Speaker 2: is a really blanket statement and you can feel really
Speaker 2: untrue to anybody that's stuck in the drinking cycle, But
Speaker 2: alcohol actually does all the opposite things of what we're
Speaker 2: drinking for, right, disconnects us, makes us more tired, zapps
Speaker 2: our energy, spikes, our cords, all the things.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I always talk about addiction and substances because there's
Speaker 5: this strange nuance to them. Right. The first is that
Speaker 5: when we first started using it, it may have done
Speaker 5: those jobs semi well. Right, that's thing one, right, and
Speaker 5: that this gets to the learning model of why we
Speaker 5: become dependent on substances, is that we learn over time.
Speaker 5: But the other thing is that if it didn't work
Speaker 5: at all, this would be so much easier, Like if
Speaker 5: you took a drink and you didn't feel temporarily a
Speaker 5: little bit better, it would be easy to see through this.
Speaker 5: But the fact is it continues to do something that,
Speaker 5: at least initially, and my experience is that initially gets
Speaker 5: smaller and smaller, and the benefit gets smaller and smaller
Speaker 5: as the costs go up and up and up. But
Speaker 5: it's the fact that it does do something that makes
Speaker 5: it hard, because it again, it would be easy to
Speaker 5: see through if it did nothing. But I think you're right.
Speaker 5: If we look honestly at anybody who's got some degree
Speaker 5: of dependence on alcohol or any substance for that matter,
Speaker 5: because I think they're all essentially the same in this
Speaker 5: regard the thing that we wanted it to do, the
Speaker 5: perfectly good reason that we may have started it. It
Speaker 5: doesn't fix that anymore. And like you said, it makes
Speaker 5: most everything worse over time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that is so true. And this is the
Speaker 2: reason that people get stuck on it, right. And what
Speaker 2: I did the research around dopamine and dinorphan and all
Speaker 2: of the ways that our body actually chemically reacts to alcohol,
Speaker 2: this is one of this massive light bulb went off
Speaker 2: for me, and I was like, oh my gosh, everybody
Speaker 2: needs to know this. And that is that that feel
Speaker 2: good feeling the dopamine that you get the reaction from
Speaker 2: the glass of whatever you're having, is actually between twenty
Speaker 2: and thirty minutes, and then your body is desperate to
Speaker 2: get back to homeostasis, so it pumps you with this
Speaker 2: downer called dinorphan, and you cannot replicate that feel good
Speaker 2: feeling with the second glass. Sometimes really feels like you can,
Speaker 2: but scientifically, looking at the way our brain works, you can't.
Speaker 2: And so that was I was like, Okay, so yes,
Speaker 2: it did the thing for twenty minutes but then it
Speaker 2: wrecked three days after.
Speaker 5: That, precisely, and you keep chasing it. That's the thing, right,
Speaker 5: because again, if you'd had one drink and afterwards you
Speaker 5: were like, oh, okay, well that was a good feeling,
Speaker 5: it's gone. I'm not going to get it from the
Speaker 5: second drink, and you just said okay enough, right, Well,
Speaker 5: you wouldn't be listening to this podcast because you'd be
Speaker 5: a normal human being probably, But those of us that
Speaker 5: relate to this go, oh yeah, but one moral do it,
Speaker 5: one moral do it. I'll get there, I'll get there.
Speaker 5: I'll get there. Right. You just keep going and the
Speaker 5: cost keeps escalating.
Speaker 1: Yeah, one hundred percent.
Speaker 2: And so when I kind of learned that, I was like,
Speaker 2: well it became a no brainer.
Speaker 1: And when you factor in cortisol and adrenaline.
Speaker 2: And the fact that that can stay raised for seven
Speaker 2: to ten days, then after you've even had a small
Speaker 2: amount to drink, then it's like, yeah, it's the twenty
Speaker 2: minutes really worth it if you're making yourself more stressed
Speaker 2: a week later.
Speaker 5: No, I mean, that's the question I have to ask myself,
Speaker 5: not that often because it doesn't come up very often,
Speaker 5: but every once in a while, I have to do
Speaker 5: that calculus in my head. Yeah, oh yeah, one drink
Speaker 5: is the best day and I depress that I've ever had,
Speaker 5: and like you said, it's twenty minutes and then wreckage.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, Okay.
Speaker 5: So we've established the problem clearly enough here. I think
Speaker 5: let's turn ourselves to some of the things that we
Speaker 5: can do that help us to change our relationship with drinking.
Speaker 5: So we've sort of talked about the core one, which
Speaker 5: is to understand what jobs we were giving it. Where
Speaker 5: do we go from there?
Speaker 2: This is the thing with all of the asking of
Speaker 2: the questions is there's so much that you can read
Speaker 2: and learn, But what I think really ends up making
Speaker 2: the change is when you do it and you feel it,
Speaker 2: when you have that experiential knowledge of Okay, I know
Speaker 2: that alcohol is going to hijack my irim sleep. You know,
Speaker 2: I can read all about how that works in the brain,
Speaker 2: but when I actually sleep not drinking, I can compare
Speaker 2: the two. And I think, if you're a regular drinker
Speaker 2: and you haven't ever taken a significant break before, we
Speaker 2: have a lot of data right of what it's like
Speaker 2: to be a drinker. But we're making a lot of
Speaker 2: assumptions about what it's like being a non drinker without
Speaker 2: having tried it. So first ask the questions and then
Speaker 2: do an experiment. Try these things. What are you assuming?
Speaker 2: You know, if you've labeled.
Speaker 1: The jobs, are those jobs really true?
Speaker 2: And the thing about finding freedom from alcohol is it
Speaker 2: obviously takes work, and it doesn't feel really good the
Speaker 2: very first time. And I've heard you talk about this
Speaker 2: on another podcast where you know, thirty days might not do.
Speaker 5: It right right where sometimes it gets worse before it
Speaker 5: gets better. It can be the experience for some people.
Speaker 5: Some people start feeling better right away, but some people
Speaker 5: feel worse, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, and then it becomes okay. So I'm using
Speaker 2: that glass of wine for connection. So that's my need?
Speaker 2: How do I get that? And there's a lot of
Speaker 2: women that I've coached that don't know how to get
Speaker 2: that thing that they need. Fun, for example, is a
Speaker 2: really big one. It's like, the only way I know
Speaker 2: how to have fun is by drinking. I don't remember
Speaker 2: what I even like to do. I coach a lot
Speaker 2: of women with that, you know. I had a gal
Speaker 2: recently who went back to a pottery class or a
Speaker 2: dance class because that's what they enjoyed in high school,
Speaker 2: pre drinking, and so it's really about getting to know
Speaker 2: the things that then can fill those unmet needs that
Speaker 2: you're using for wine. And if you keep doing that
Speaker 2: in a way where you're giving yourself a ton of
Speaker 2: grace and a ton of self compassion. And by that
Speaker 2: I also mean if you're on a break from alcohol
Speaker 2: and you're looking at your relationship and you have a drink,
Speaker 2: you don't necessarily have to go back to day one.
Speaker 2: If counting days doesn't work for you, Let's figure out
Speaker 2: what you learned from that growth point. And so that
Speaker 2: also is super super important because, like we touched on
Speaker 2: shame briefly, that's not going to help us at all.
Speaker 2: But if we can come to a place of grace, compassion,
Speaker 2: curiosity of just would my life be better without this?
Speaker 2: What I feel better? How do I want to feel?
Speaker 2: How is alcohol playing into that? Asking the questions and
Speaker 2: doing the experiment and getting to the truth of all
Speaker 2: of it as just that's what helped me so much.
Speaker 5: So listener, consider this. You're halfway through the episode integration reminder.
Speaker 5: Remember knowledge is power, but only if combined with action
Speaker 5: and integration it can be transformative to take a minute
Speaker 5: to synthesize information rather than just ingesting it in a
Speaker 5: detached way. So let's collectively take a moment to pause
Speaker 5: and reflect. What's your one big insight so far and
Speaker 5: how can you put it into practice in your life? Seriously,
Speaker 5: just take a second, pause the audio and reflect. It
Speaker 5: can be so powerful to have these reminders to stop
Speaker 5: and be present, can't it. If you want to keep
Speaker 5: this momentum going that you built with this little exercise,
Speaker 5: i'd encourage you to get on our Good Wolf Reminders
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Speaker 5: insightful little prompts and wisdom from podcast guests. They're a
Speaker 5: nice little nudge to stop and be present in your life,
Speaker 5: and they're a helpful way to not get lost in
Speaker 5: the busyness and forget what is important. You can join
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Speaker 5: feed our good wolves together. The phrase you just use
Speaker 5: their growth point is one that I really like. What
Speaker 5: you mean by growth point is Let's say I'm trying
Speaker 5: to do a forty day alcohol fast and on day
Speaker 5: seven I end up having a few drinks. Right, Instead
Speaker 5: of looking at as a failure, we look at that
Speaker 5: as a growth point. It's a chance to learn something right.
Speaker 5: And I think that is really important because I think
Speaker 5: most people, if they're trying to change their relationship with
Speaker 5: a substance, are going to have lots of quote unquote
Speaker 5: what look like failures, right, like, even everything you do
Speaker 5: up to the last time when you get so like
Speaker 5: I think about it, like there was a day, you know,
Speaker 5: fifteen years ago was the last time I had any substance.
Speaker 5: But there were lots of things that I tried before
Speaker 5: that that didn't quote unquote work, that actually were part
Speaker 5: of getting me to whatever magic puzzle pieces clicked together
Speaker 5: fifteen years ago. It was those times that I tried
Speaker 5: and it didn't work that were part of the solution.
Speaker 5: They were part of the answer. And I think that
Speaker 5: that's so important, and I think you do a great
Speaker 5: job of really highlighting that because if we take failure
Speaker 5: to either mean we're bad people, so we feel bad
Speaker 5: about ourselves and the way we cope with that is
Speaker 5: to drink, or we take failure to mean we can't
Speaker 5: do it. I've known so many people who just go,
Speaker 5: I can't. You might have been able to, but I
Speaker 5: won't be able to. I can't. And the lens to
Speaker 5: get through that is at least that I think is
Speaker 5: you just haven't figured it out yet. We haven't figured
Speaker 5: it out yet. What's your combination, what's your puzzle pieces
Speaker 5: that come together that are going to lead to you
Speaker 5: having more freedom? I just love the way you talk
Speaker 5: about that, and I love that idea of growth point.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I always use the example A couple examples.
Speaker 2: One is if you fell at like the twenty mile
Speaker 2: marker of a marathon. I'm not a runner, but would
Speaker 2: you go back to the starting line? No, you would
Speaker 2: get up and you would finish the race right. Or
Speaker 2: for the moms out there, your little toddlers learning how
Speaker 2: to walk, they keep falling down. Do you say you're
Speaker 2: horrible at this, stop trying. No, you say, get up
Speaker 2: and try again. And for some reason, with the drinking thing,
Speaker 2: we feel like we have to make it perfect and
Speaker 2: if it's not, then, as you said, we're somehow failures
Speaker 2: that we're not going to be able to do it.
Speaker 2: And then for a lot of people this idea of
Speaker 2: you are then this alcoholic, You're never going to be
Speaker 2: able to have any fun, You're going to have to
Speaker 2: go to meetings for the rest of your life.
Speaker 1: That kind of.
Speaker 2: Narrative can be really scary. So exactly what you said,
Speaker 2: it's about figuring out what works for you. And that's
Speaker 2: what I love so much about your story. And also
Speaker 2: this podcast is you get to pick and choose right
Speaker 2: because right push comes to shove. It's about choice. And
Speaker 2: it's also this is beautiful work that we get to
Speaker 2: do it. We don't have to do this, we get
Speaker 2: to do it. And sobriety is a gift and a blessing.
Speaker 2: It's not something that I had to do with something
Speaker 2: I got to do and like, I'm so worrateful that
Speaker 2: I got to do it.
Speaker 5: That's a really lovely reframing and you do that a
Speaker 5: lot in the book, sort of the reframing from deprivation
Speaker 5: to what am I giving myself? Right, I'm giving myself
Speaker 5: good health, I'm giving myself better sleep, I'm giving myself
Speaker 5: more clarity instead of I'm taking this thing away from me.
Speaker 5: I always share this story because I think it's such
Speaker 5: a great one around these growth points, and it's from
Speaker 5: a client of mine. She figured this out. I did
Speaker 5: not figure it out. But she was having trouble getting
Speaker 5: to complete abstinence, and so she started this thing where
Speaker 5: every day she sober, she put a marble in a jar.
Speaker 5: And it was amazing because what we got to see
Speaker 5: was this jar just filling up and filling up and
Speaker 5: filling up right. And so instead of looking at the
Speaker 5: one day, let's say it was one or two days
Speaker 5: a month that it didn't work, what we saw was
Speaker 5: this accumulation of sober days. We were focusing on the
Speaker 5: good there, not the bad. And I think that can
Speaker 5: be a really important thing to be able to do,
Speaker 5: is to recognize, like, Okay, I'm not perfect, but wow,
Speaker 5: I had twenty two sober days last month. That's better
Speaker 5: than the month before where I had zero. Yeah, And
Speaker 5: that's the way some people get there a progress like that.
Speaker 5: Other people are able to sort of just stop, but
Speaker 5: lots of people it's more a process than that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and progress can look so many different ways. Like
Speaker 2: I was chatting with a client recently and we were
Speaker 2: talking about she had had a few days drinking that week.
Speaker 2: But what she did was she stopped before those drinks
Speaker 2: and she actually took out her journal, right and she
Speaker 2: wrote down why and she and she journaled through cravings
Speaker 2: that she then would overcome in all of this.
Speaker 1: And so I said to her, she he know.
Speaker 2: She came to the call and she's like, I wasn't
Speaker 2: perfect and I drank forties this week or whatever it was.
Speaker 2: And I was like, wait, can we talk about that
Speaker 2: journal situation that you just read to me? Because that
Speaker 2: progress of getting behind of the why and figuring out
Speaker 2: why you're doing this and delaying the craving and all
Speaker 2: of that, that is such incredible progress.
Speaker 1: And to your point with the marvel in the Jar,
Speaker 1: I love that so much.
Speaker 2: Sometimes what I do with clients is I have them
Speaker 2: print out a calendar and then we highlight the days
Speaker 2: and then we take the percentage at the end. I've
Speaker 2: created a fun little celebration tracker to go along with
Speaker 2: the book, kind of similar where let's figure out, like
Speaker 2: let's celebrate the winds as opposed to focusing on being perfect.
Speaker 1: So I love that so much.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's so important. Let's talk about thoughts. You talk
Speaker 5: about taking every thought captive. What do you mean by that?
Speaker 2: So even if when we're talking about the whys, right,
Speaker 2: that's the thought like I'm drinking to relax or I'm
Speaker 2: drinking because I want to connect, And so the battlefield
Speaker 2: of all of this is going on in our minds,
Speaker 2: and we are not used to listening to our thoughts.
Speaker 2: We're like very used to thoughts kind of calling the
Speaker 2: shots and going along with what they say. And it's
Speaker 2: so funny because we're having this conversation relatively close to
Speaker 2: when the cute Pixar movie Now It's just Fallen out
Speaker 2: of my Head Inside Out Too, has just come out,
Speaker 2: and I went with the kids, and it was just
Speaker 2: a really fun way of kind of showing what's going
Speaker 2: on in your brain, but looking at your thoughts, and
Speaker 2: your thoughts don't necessarily have to be true. We have
Speaker 2: been conditioned for a number and number of years to
Speaker 2: believe various things about alcohol, but also various things about
Speaker 2: lots of things in our life, and so it's taking
Speaker 2: those thoughts captive and asking whether they're true or not.
Speaker 2: I work a lot with women who come with a
Speaker 2: list of like shoulds right, I should be doing this,
Speaker 2: I have to do this, I should be doing this,
Speaker 2: I need to host this party, I have to run
Speaker 2: all these committees. And it's like, well, let's take that
Speaker 2: thought out and let's put some light on it. Ask ourselves,
Speaker 2: is this really true? Or are you putting that on yourself?
Speaker 2: And if you're putting this expectation on yourself, how is
Speaker 2: that serving you? And so it's just getting really really
Speaker 2: clear about what we're thinking, yeah, and which is something
Speaker 2: that we're not trained to do right and something that
Speaker 2: takes practice, and asking ourselves if that thought is true
Speaker 2: and if it's serving us or not, and if it's
Speaker 2: not serving us, why are we thinking it? Why are
Speaker 2: we holding onto it? Why are we letting ourselves mind
Speaker 2: spiral on something?
Speaker 5: Yeah? I love that what you just said about that,
Speaker 5: you know, is it serving me? One of my favorites
Speaker 5: is with thoughts to look and say is this useful? Right?
Speaker 5: Is this actually useful in getting me to where I
Speaker 5: want to go? Because truth it could go either way, right,
Speaker 5: you can be like, well maybe I don't know, right,
Speaker 5: But then it's like is it useful, and I think
Speaker 5: so often we're making up the stories about things, we're
Speaker 5: giving things their meaning and interpretation. And if we can,
Speaker 5: like you said, take our thoughts out and really examine
Speaker 5: them and say, okay, you know, is this true? And
Speaker 5: also is it useful right or is it serving me?
Speaker 5: To use your phrase? We're not trained to do it,
Speaker 5: and it's really hard to do, and the mind is
Speaker 5: really slippery. You have a lot of journaling in this book,
Speaker 5: and I assume that's why, because things in our head
Speaker 5: are slippery, yeah.
Speaker 1: One hundred percent.
Speaker 2: And pulling it out, putting it on paper so that
Speaker 2: you can actually see it and examine it is a
Speaker 2: really important I think exercise.
Speaker 1: For sure.
Speaker 5: Talk to me about one thing at a time? What
Speaker 5: do you mean by that?
Speaker 2: So I think the idea of one day at a
Speaker 2: time could potentially have this twelve step stigma attached to it.
Speaker 2: Right where you're white knuckling, you're going to have to
Speaker 2: be in this forever. This is going to feel hard
Speaker 2: and heavy, and you're going to be in this deprived
Speaker 2: place for the rest of your life.
Speaker 1: It can be really, really overwhelming to people.
Speaker 2: However, in the beginning of an alcohol free journey and
Speaker 2: alcohol freedom journey. It can be really really helpful because
Speaker 2: these hard things that we're talking about, examining our thoughts,
Speaker 2: managing cravings, all of that are actually temporary, and a
Speaker 2: good night's sleep fixes a lot of things. And so
Speaker 2: in the very beginning, one day at a time, while
Speaker 2: you're also doing this work of discovering the reasons behind
Speaker 2: your drinking and grace and capassion, I think can be
Speaker 2: really really helpful. But then what happens is, or at
Speaker 2: least happened for me, is the one day at a
Speaker 2: time then just became I don't think about alcohol anymore.
Speaker 1: I've lost the desire to drink. I don't struggle with.
Speaker 2: This, And so I think one day at a time
Speaker 2: can be really helpful in the beginning, but it can
Speaker 2: also feel heavy depending on how you're.
Speaker 5: Looking at it right right, And I think that's the
Speaker 5: big promise, which is that there is a way in
Speaker 5: which it seems impossible right now, but there will come
Speaker 5: a day where you don't want a drink. And again
Speaker 5: that seemed impossible to me in the beginning too literally,
Speaker 5: I mean, I would hear that and I would think
Speaker 5: that there's no way, like all I want is a drink, right,
Speaker 5: and I want it so bad. And yet the problem,
Speaker 5: like for most of us, if we're able to stay
Speaker 5: sober for a period of time, it goes away. It
Speaker 5: just disappears, which is bizarre. It's bizarre to me the
Speaker 5: level of non reaction to alcohol that I have. Right
Speaker 5: before this interview, I'm in a studio here and they
Speaker 5: entertain here, and so I went, I had a sandwich,
Speaker 5: and I went to the refrigerator and I opened it
Speaker 5: up and I put the sandwich in. And since they
Speaker 5: do have events here, it is just stocked with beer
Speaker 5: and hard seltzer and all kinds of stuff. It might
Speaker 5: as well have been a fridge full of like cow piss.
Speaker 5: I mean, it just didn't have any like. It didn't
Speaker 5: gross me out.
Speaker 4: I guess it was.
Speaker 5: It was a fridge fulliss. I would have a stronger
Speaker 5: reaction than I did. I didn't think about it. I
Speaker 5: wasn't like, oh that's alcohol, that's careful, I better not
Speaker 5: have it. It just like didn't even really think about it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I love that so much. When you were saying that,
Speaker 1: I was thinking.
Speaker 2: Last summer even I took my daughter to Taylor Swift
Speaker 2: in LA and I was like very aware of like
Speaker 2: the mom's drinking and thinking to myself, oh my gosh,
Speaker 2: they're not going to even get to like the third
Speaker 2: era because going.
Speaker 1: To be feeling awful. And then I just took her
Speaker 1: this last weekend because she came to London.
Speaker 2: Then here a year later and it was everywhere and
Speaker 2: I got in the car and I was like, oh,
Speaker 2: I didn't even really notice it this time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 5: I always find it a little bit for me of
Speaker 5: a warning sign if I start noticing it right, Like
Speaker 5: if I suddenly am like noticing like people's like, oh
Speaker 5: there's a glass of wine over there, and there's someone
Speaker 5: else's got tequila, and like if it starts pulling my
Speaker 5: attention even subtly, I usually just ask myself like, Okay,
Speaker 5: what's going on inside because that is almost non existent
Speaker 5: for me most of the time, which I I think
Speaker 5: we're both sharing this in a message of hope for people,
Speaker 5: because if I had to live the way I felt
Speaker 5: early on with this feeling like I was torn into
Speaker 5: like half of may being like you can't do it,
Speaker 5: and the other half of me being like you have
Speaker 5: to do it. Like if I had to live the
Speaker 5: rest of my life that way, it would be awful.
Speaker 5: It's an awful feeling, yeah, yeah, but it goes away,
Speaker 5: which is the good news, or none of us would
Speaker 5: actually probably manage to stay sober if you felt that
Speaker 5: way all the time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, one hundred percent. That's cognitive dissonance at its finest, right.
Speaker 2: I was just gonna say, it's just yeah.
Speaker 1: I really want it, but I don't want it and
Speaker 1: all of that.
Speaker 2: And that's why if you get under the subconscious conditioning,
Speaker 2: under all these reasons, under these assumptions, under the jobs,
Speaker 2: whatever you want to call it, and kind of call
Speaker 2: that stuff out, but then also feel it and feel
Speaker 2: the difference, that's when you get to start, I think
Speaker 2: feeling this hope and I love that so much because
Speaker 2: that's all I want, is this to be a conversation
Speaker 2: of hope and freedom and all of that and for
Speaker 2: people not to feel alone. If you feel like you're drinking,
Speaker 2: looks like everybody else around you, but you know in
Speaker 2: your soul that it's not feeling good, yep.
Speaker 5: And that's the ultimate measure, right. It's not about how
Speaker 5: often you drink, or what time of day you drink,
Speaker 5: or whether you've had a dui or those are not
Speaker 5: the thing, right, The thing is how do you feel
Speaker 5: about it? And most people know how they feel about it,
Speaker 5: right if you ask yourself that you know there's something
Speaker 5: in you that goes, oh yeah, right, doesn't feel right.
Speaker 5: That doesn't mean you get sober. I mean I didn't
Speaker 5: feel right for a long time. I ignored it as
Speaker 5: best I could. But you know, it wasn't that far
Speaker 5: into my substance use career where I noticed, like something
Speaker 5: feels wrong.
Speaker 1: Yeah, one hundred percent.
Speaker 2: I talk about in the book about values and how
Speaker 2: drinking just moved me really far away from those values
Speaker 2: that I held really dear, like you know, dependability and
Speaker 2: honest and learning and all of these things that had
Speaker 2: been something that was really important to me. And just
Speaker 2: the little ways that alcohol kind of chipped away at
Speaker 2: that not being so dependable because maybe I would cancel
Speaker 2: because I had a hangover, or just totally like not learning,
Speaker 2: not reading books because who has time to read when
Speaker 2: you're just down and wine every night. And so that
Speaker 2: moving slowly and slowly away from the person that you
Speaker 2: feel like you want to be or what you hold
Speaker 2: as values was something that when I kind of looked
Speaker 2: back I was like, oh, okay, yep, it wasn't a
Speaker 2: massive du why it wasn't all these things, It was this,
Speaker 2: and that is enough to look at it in a
Speaker 2: filled way.
Speaker 5: One of the things that people often do is they
Speaker 5: get a little bit of time sober and they start
Speaker 5: to feel better, and then they survey their life and
Speaker 5: they see all sorts of other stuff that feels like
Speaker 5: it suddenly needs to be fixed. What do you caution
Speaker 5: people to do in that situation.
Speaker 2: Well, I think, first of all, if you feel like
Speaker 2: alcohol is something that you want to look at, start
Speaker 2: with that and don't do all these other things. I
Speaker 2: have a lot of women that come to me and
Speaker 2: they're like, Okay, I want to ditch alcohol, and I
Speaker 2: want to train for a marathon, and I want to
Speaker 2: cut glute and I want a laha. It's like, well,
Speaker 2: let's focus on one thing at a time, right, Because
Speaker 2: there's so much science about habit change that says if
Speaker 2: you put too many new things in that they all
Speaker 2: end up failing. But I actually love that when alcohol
Speaker 2: then finally is out of the picture, that you do
Speaker 2: get to look at these other things. And there are
Speaker 2: things that I don't think at least for me, I
Speaker 2: didn't see it coming right, things like learning to sit
Speaker 2: with hard emotions, things like learning how to express and
Speaker 2: keep boundaries because I supporting the unmet need of being
Speaker 2: alone or rest or whatever it is. And so again,
Speaker 2: it's kind of this work that we get to do,
Speaker 2: and I think it slowly presents itself when alcohol's out
Speaker 2: of the picture, because alcohol tends to muddy all of
Speaker 2: this other stuff.
Speaker 1: I guess my advice is not to do it all
Speaker 1: at once.
Speaker 2: If you feel like Alcohl hall is the thing that's
Speaker 2: keeping you stuck, to focus on that and then see
Speaker 2: what comes up from it. And one of my favorite
Speaker 2: things about coaching is push comes to shove. It actually
Speaker 2: never is about alcohol.
Speaker 1: It's about so much more about what's underneath it.
Speaker 5: Right, Yeah, Yeah, I think it's this subtle balance because
Speaker 5: I agree with you, like trying to take on too much.
Speaker 5: I talk about this all the time. Small steps or
Speaker 5: a little by little, a little becomes a lot, these ideas.
Speaker 5: And there are also things though that we can do
Speaker 5: that we could add to our life that make perhaps
Speaker 5: stain off the alcohol easier. You talk about joyful movement
Speaker 5: as an example.
Speaker 2: Yeah, joyful movement one hundred percent because of also what
Speaker 2: it does to our brain chemistry, and I think maybe
Speaker 2: some of your women listeners can relate to this. I
Speaker 2: had to actually like ditch the word exercise and lean
Speaker 2: into more calling it joyful exercise because it was about
Speaker 2: the feeling good and not necessarily about how I wanted
Speaker 2: to be smaller, skinning, or change my body. That was
Speaker 2: something that came up in my journey after I did
Speaker 2: chocohol eating protein because protein balances blood sugar, and if
Speaker 2: you have more stable blood sugar, cravings aren't going to
Speaker 2: be as intense, especially you know, as you go throughout
Speaker 2: the day.
Speaker 1: And so there's lots of these little things that.
Speaker 2: I talk about in the book bookending your day starting
Speaker 2: with something in the morning, whether it's a book or
Speaker 2: a podcast or meditation or journaling, but then also ending
Speaker 2: your day with something so you have something at either
Speaker 2: end of the day. And this is all experimentation to
Speaker 2: see what kind of works for you. One of the
Speaker 2: things that really help me that also really helps clients is,
Speaker 2: for example, if a walk is really serving you and
Speaker 2: it's making you feel really good, and you know that
Speaker 2: at nine o'clock after you drop the kids at school
Speaker 2: or whatever. That is something that's going to set you
Speaker 2: up for success during the day is to actually get
Speaker 2: out your calendar, whether it's a paper one or your
Speaker 2: iPhone or whatever, and put that in as a non
Speaker 2: negotiable and really have that time scheduled. And I also
Speaker 2: did that, and I have to actually come back to
Speaker 2: it sometimes right when I'm like busy with clients or
Speaker 2: kids and everything, it's like, oh, I like I'm running
Speaker 2: on empty at the end of the day and I
Speaker 2: look back and I didn't get my walk, and I
Speaker 2: didn't do my journaling, and I didn't do my things.
Speaker 1: And so to put that.
Speaker 2: In as non negotiable, especially in the beginning, was super,
Speaker 2: super helpful.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it is interesting the way as we get busy
Speaker 5: we tend to jettison the things that allow us to
Speaker 5: perform well enough to remain busy, I guess would be
Speaker 5: the way to say it, you know, or as life
Speaker 5: gets more stressful, we often the first things that we
Speaker 5: throw out are the things that help us cope with stress.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I mean overuse the phrase, but you really
Speaker 2: cannot pour from an empty cup.
Speaker 1: You just can't.
Speaker 2: You cannot give to others in the same way if
Speaker 2: you're not taking care of yourself.
Speaker 5: We've sort of covered this a little bit, but I
Speaker 5: want to hit on it a little bit more directly,
Speaker 5: which is redefining self care. You say, one of the
Speaker 5: most pervasive messages we face in our society, especially as women,
Speaker 5: is that drinking is a form of self care.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And again it gets back to that what is true,
Speaker 2: right is if it's supposed to make you feel better,
Speaker 2: if it's supposed to serve you, it's supposed to give
Speaker 2: you something like rest we're coping or connection.
Speaker 1: Does alcohol really really do that?
Speaker 2: And we're also up against a society of social media
Speaker 2: where its wine is self care, but also going to
Speaker 2: get an expensive massage is self care, or anything related
Speaker 2: to the spa is self care, or shopping is self care.
Speaker 2: And it's really looking at the truth of all that, right,
Speaker 2: because self care might just actually be going to bed
Speaker 2: an hour early, or making your budget or these things
Speaker 2: that actually set you up for success, that make you
Speaker 2: feel better and allow you to stick to your goals.
Speaker 2: But we're up against the conditioning, just like with alcohol,
Speaker 2: where self care is like let's do more things, buy
Speaker 2: more things, and it doesn't have to be that and soda.
Speaker 2: I talk about that in the book of Redefine It, like,
Speaker 2: what actually do you need for me? Honestly, sometimes it's
Speaker 2: going to bed an hour before the kids and just saying,
Speaker 2: you know they're old enough to do this, Now put
Speaker 2: yourself to bed. And it's not this likely flashy, exciting
Speaker 2: thing that makes a glamorous Instagram post, But it is
Speaker 2: true self care for me.
Speaker 1: Or saying no.
Speaker 2: Right, saying no to the parties, saying no to the committee,
Speaker 2: saying no to the extra responsibility at work like that
Speaker 2: is also self care. It's just kind of like flipping
Speaker 2: that on its head. One of the things I talk
Speaker 2: about in the book is, for example, one day we
Speaker 2: waking up the run might be good self care, but
Speaker 2: also sleeping in might be self care. And a good
Speaker 2: way to measure that is what do you feel like
Speaker 2: when you get home from the run. Are you so
Speaker 2: glad you did it or are you more exhausted? What
Speaker 2: do you feel like when you get home from that
Speaker 2: dinner party that you feel might feel like obligatory, Did
Speaker 2: you feel good that you went or did it feel
Speaker 2: like a drain? And so figuring it out kind of
Speaker 2: that way, and again it's just going against all the
Speaker 2: pervasive social media and messaging of society and getting under
Speaker 2: the hood of like what's real, what's just not?
Speaker 5: Did you and do you encourage clients to change their
Speaker 5: relationship with social media if the messages that they are
Speaker 5: getting are are consistently pointing at the wrong thing for them.
Speaker 2: It's obviously very very individual. One thing I do say
Speaker 2: is that if someone is enjoying it and doesn't feel
Speaker 2: like they need to address it, is at least go
Speaker 2: in and unfollow the accounts that are promoting for example,
Speaker 2: mommy wine culture right and the second you do that,
Speaker 2: right now, the algorithms so smart that'll stop.
Speaker 1: Beating that stuff to you.
Speaker 2: But if it feels like that ends up taking place,
Speaker 2: for example of alcohol, like if you feel like that's
Speaker 2: the thing that you're using then to numb out, then
Speaker 2: look at it how it actually is making you feel.
Speaker 2: If you're scrolling Instagram for an hour, does it make
Speaker 2: you feel better? Does it make you feel more connected?
Speaker 2: Does it bring you joy? Or does it do the
Speaker 2: opposite of that thing? You can apply kind of all
Speaker 2: the same questions.
Speaker 5: Yep, Yeah, I think that's such a useful way to
Speaker 5: frame up this idea is did it end up making
Speaker 5: me feel better? Right? Because self indulgence is not the
Speaker 5: same thing as self care. They could be the same
Speaker 5: activity sometimes sometimes not. And I think what you're saying
Speaker 5: is go a little bit deeper and ask yourself, like,
Speaker 5: did that actually move the needle on me feeling better?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 5: With me, I guess I don't do really any social
Speaker 5: media anymore. But when I did, I was able to
Speaker 5: notice this thing that about the first fifteen minutes of
Speaker 5: it felt enjoyable. I was stimulated and I was like, oh,
Speaker 5: look I see this thing and that's interesting, and that's
Speaker 5: like it felt good. But then somewhere around the fifteen
Speaker 5: to twenty minute mark, if I paid close attention to myself,
Speaker 5: something shifted, something shifted where it just suddenly it just
Speaker 5: didn't feel good anymore.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so similar to alcohol.
Speaker 5: It's real easy to go right by that because you're distracted.
Speaker 5: That's part of why they work the way they do,
Speaker 5: is they distract you, but there is usually a subtle
Speaker 5: feeling there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, one hundred percent.
Speaker 2: I was just going to say, it's so similar to alcohol, right,
Speaker 2: because it's the same dopamine response.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Interestingly, I had not heard of dainorphan before let's close
Speaker 5: with a little bit more about dinorphan, because I've been
Speaker 5: doing this for a decade, in reading thousands of so
Speaker 5: many of these books that I can't believe I haven't
Speaker 5: heard of dnorphan before. Tell me more so.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So, I mean we know about dopamine, right, It's
Speaker 2: the feel good chemical. It's also the learning molecule in
Speaker 2: the brain, so we learn it feels good, we see
Speaker 2: met these neural pathways in our head. But when we
Speaker 2: drink or do any substances, we get this artificial level
Speaker 2: of dopamine, and since our brains are desperate to bring
Speaker 2: us back to homeostasis, it releases a counter chemical called dinorphine,
Speaker 2: which basically brings you down right. It's a sedative, it's
Speaker 2: a downer. And what ends up happening when you're a
Speaker 2: regular drinker is your body gets so used to the
Speaker 2: incoming massive spects of artificial dopamine that it releases more
Speaker 2: and more dinorphan, and so you cannot get or feel
Speaker 2: joy or happiness without the massive amounts of dopamine aka alcohol,
Speaker 2: because you're flooded with this opposing chemical. And how that
Speaker 2: looks in real life for me as realizing that I
Speaker 2: would be sitting at my daughter's ballet recital or my
Speaker 2: son's baseball game, and I was like, this is not
Speaker 2: fun because there's no alcohol, and that is because of
Speaker 2: this other thing. And it also ties into how we
Speaker 2: were talking about twenty minutes. The dopamine hits you for
Speaker 2: twenty minutes, and then this other chemical, you know, the
Speaker 2: evil brother whatever, comes in and does the opposite.
Speaker 1: And so it's just a really interesting way to understand.
Speaker 2: All of the neuroscience of what actually is happening and
Speaker 2: get to the truth of is it actually doing the
Speaker 2: job that we're drinking it for.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's one of the other things that makes addiction.
Speaker 5: I'm going to use the word we don't know. We
Speaker 5: could use alcohol use disorder, but I'm just going to
Speaker 5: broadly say addiction. So pernicious is that thing that you're
Speaker 5: describing there, which is our neurochemicals are all messed up,
Speaker 5: and so we may not be producing enough of the
Speaker 5: chemicals that make us feel good, or we may be
Speaker 5: overproducing the chemicals that tamp down that response. And you
Speaker 5: take the alcohol away or the substance, and you have
Speaker 5: the inability to enjoy pleasure. So then somebody says, well,
Speaker 5: go to a pottery class instead of drinking wine, and
Speaker 5: you go to the pottery class and you're like, so
Speaker 5: I care, Like that was stupid, right, Like, okay, that
Speaker 5: did not make me feeling better. I was uncomfortable. I
Speaker 5: didn't know anybody. And it's again why I think that
Speaker 5: having support early on in any sort of sobriety journey
Speaker 5: is so so important, because just to hear somebody else
Speaker 5: say that's normal, just hanging there, like, of course you
Speaker 5: can't feel good, but I felt the same way, and
Speaker 5: you know what, it gets better. Yeah, Like, whether it's
Speaker 5: a coach like you, whether it's an online group, whether
Speaker 5: it's a twelve step program. People often ask me like,
Speaker 5: what's the one thing that someone has to do to
Speaker 5: get sober. I'm like, well, I would never boil it
Speaker 5: down to one thing, because I think it's complicated. But
Speaker 5: if you at gunpoint forced me, I would probably say
Speaker 5: help from other people who've been through it. That would
Speaker 5: probably be. If I had to make one recommendation, I'd
Speaker 5: say that one is sort of the non negotia on
Speaker 5: the table.
Speaker 2: I think, yes, one hundred percent, community, community, community, all
Speaker 2: the way. It's because you don't feel alone, then the
Speaker 2: shame also evaporates because when you speak something that feels
Speaker 2: shameful in a group, that helps with the shame piece
Speaker 2: of it. And when you can hear other people saying yes.
Speaker 2: When I went to that party and turned down the
Speaker 2: glass of wine, it was so weird and I felt
Speaker 2: like a fish out of water for fifteen minutes, but
Speaker 2: then twenty minutes in, I was fine and I was
Speaker 2: able to be Okay. Then you know it's possible for
Speaker 2: you too, And so yes, one hundred percent, I totally
Speaker 2: agree with you. And that can come in different forms, right,
Speaker 2: whether it is a twelve step meeting or even just
Speaker 2: connecting with the sober podcast hosts that you like listening
Speaker 2: to or whatever.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Absolutely, yeah, I think that's the thing. There are a
Speaker 5: lot of ways to get it. Like when I got
Speaker 5: sober in nineteen ninety four, there was one place to
Speaker 5: hear any of this, and it was in a twelve
Speaker 5: step room. That was it. It just didn't exist in any
Speaker 5: meaningful way outside of that. I mean, the internet didn't exist.
Speaker 5: It's so different today. We have so many resources and
Speaker 5: different ways of plugging in. And that's the other one
Speaker 5: I always say. We used to say in AA like
Speaker 5: keep coming back, right, which meant you know, keep trying.
Speaker 5: And I think that's the other message that I think
Speaker 5: is so important is you don't have to keep coming
Speaker 5: back to AA. That's not it. But keep trying, keep experimenting,
Speaker 5: because there is a way out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, one hundred percent, and with all the grace and
Speaker 2: compassion in yourself, knowing that alcohol is a highly addictive
Speaker 2: drug and this is hard, but there's nothing wrong with you.
Speaker 2: There's a lot wrong with alcohol, and you'll get there.
Speaker 1: You'll get there. What you said right, the puzzle pieces
Speaker 1: that work and it will happen.
Speaker 5: Well, that is a beautiful place for us to end
Speaker 5: the conversation on that note of hope. You and I
Speaker 5: are going to talk a little bit longer in the
Speaker 5: post show conversation because I want to just talk a
Speaker 5: little bit about some of the different theories about addiction
Speaker 5: or dependency out there. There's a disease model, there's a
Speaker 5: learning model, there's a self medication. I just kind of
Speaker 5: want to talk through some of the different facets of those.
Speaker 5: We're going to do that in the post show conversation.
Speaker 5: Listeners if you'd like to get access to that as
Speaker 5: well as ad free episodes and help support us because
Speaker 5: we can use your help for sure. Go to one
Speaker 5: you feed dot net slash join Christy. Thank you so much.
Speaker 5: I've really enjoyed this conversation.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much.
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